Two Schools, One Building

By Michael Hertting qand Anne Fischer

Many staff members and parents couldn’t believe it when our board of education voted to move three alternative high school programs into the same building that housed kindergarten through second-grade children.

The move would save our district more than $400,000, because it would no longer need to lease the space for the alternative programs. However, many were concerned about two vastly different programs, working with two completely different student populations, sharing spaces. Could these populations successfully coexist?

As principals of these respective programs, we say yes. In fact, our efforts to create a mutually productive sharing of spaces have allowed us to do so much more than just coexist.